Cody" used to sit together on summer nights in Connecticut to watch a show Fullenwider never saw growing up in the Ojai Valley.

"In the summer, we had fireflies, which were a new thing for me," said the seventh-generation Ventura County native who now lives in Connecticut. "The stars here are amazing."

The little girl Fullenwider used to spoil was Avielle "Avie" Rose Richman, 6. She was among the 26 children and educators killed Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Fullenwider does not want to talk about that day, but his voice quavers when he remembers Avie.

"I knew I could pull into their driveway, I would park my car and see the door open, and she and her dog, Max, would run out and she would yell, 'Cody!' " Fullenwider said. "No matter how bad of a day I was having, that would brighten it and it would go away."

Fullenwider is now helping Avie's parents start the Avielle Foundation, which will launch a two-pronged effort to keep other communities from enduring similar violence.

"This can happen in any community — your community," said a news release written by Avie's parents, Jeremy Richman and Jennifer Hensel. "It has happened in our schools, theaters, places of worship, malls and offices. ... As citizens of any community, it is our responsibility to be outraged. ... It is our responsibility to take action to ensure this doesn't happen again."

Fullenwider, 31, has been close to the Richman family since 2006, when he and Jeremy Richman worked together at a pharmaceutical laboratory in San Diego.

Fullenwider graduated from CSU Channel Islands in Camarillo with a degree in microbiology, then took the job in San Diego. Both Richman and Fullenwider are research scientists, and Fullenwider's wife also works in the pharmaceutical industry.

When Fullenwider met the Richman family, their only child was an infant.

Fullenwider accepted a job offer with a pharmaceutical company near Newtown in 2009.

"I found Sandy Hook," a village in the town of Newtown, Fullenwider said. "I liked it because it was a small-town community a lot like Ojai."

Jeremy Richman took a job at the same company a year later, and the family moved in about a mile from Fullenwider's house.

Fullenwider read books, colored and practiced archery with Avie as he watched her grow.

"We would read together. For a normal first-grader, she was actually reading very well," he said.

For Fullenwider's birthday on Nov. 20, Avie made him a card that he keeps on his refrigerator.

"She was so proud that she made it all by herself," Fullenwider said. "There's a sun and a cat and a picture that's supposed to be me and her holding hands."

"She had wanted an Easy Bake, and that's what her parents got her," Fullenwider said. "The whole thing she wanted to do was make her mom cookies."

Then came the day that tore the nation apart. Now, Fullenwider said, the community of Newtown is united in every way.

"There was a lady in the grocery store who was walking down the aisle and she looked at me and said, 'You look sad.' And she gave me a hug," Fullenwider said. "She let me know I wasn't alone."

Fullenwider said the formation of the foundation began taking shape a few weeks ago. Avie's parents and Fullenwider are still ironing out the details on how they will implement their goals, but the nonprofit is aimed at two things: mental health research and fostering resilient communities.

"Too little is known in the mental health area in regard to what drives such horrible behavior," Richman and Hensel wrote in their news release.

Richman and Hensel want communities to overlook differences such as political or religious beliefs or social ideologies and see one another as potential friends.

"In such communities, people don't feel ostracized, stigmatized, bullied or alienated, and the propensity to act in desperate, destructive or violent ways is diminished or eliminated," Richman and Hensel wrote.

It's an open-mindedness that they tried to instill in Avie, they said.

Fullenwider hopes Newtown no longer will "be viewed as a place trying to get past this, but as a town that facilitates change."